This critique of email (asynchronous communication) comes not from Luddites but from cutting edge computer scientists and mathematicians. It appears there is a place for synchronous communications.
Charley Dewberry is a tutor and the dean at Gutenberg College, a practicing scientist and stream ecologist, and the author of Saving Science: A Critique of Science and Its Role in Salmon Recovery (2004) and Intelligent Discourse: Exposing the Fallacious Standoff Between Evolution and Intelligent Design (2006). He has a M.A. in fisheries and wildlife and a Ph.D. in philosophy with an emphasis on philosophy of science.